The Anniversary, a band from Lawrence, earned national recognition before it broke up in 2004, but the band has reunited for a national tour that concludes in their hometown on Saturday.
3 reasons we're listening to The Anniversary this week:
1. A confessional offshoot of punk in which heartfelt musicians disclosed their emotions, emo has fallen out of favor in recent years. But in emo's happier days, Kansas City and Lawrence-based bands the Get Up Kids, Casket Lottery, and the Appleseed Cast made our area one cradle of the sound. While not quite as accomplished as the Get Up Kids, the Anniversary was an important contributor to the movement in the first part of the 2000s.
2. Among the band's former members, Josh Berwanger has cultivated the most notable solo career.
3. “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” the first song on the band’s first album Designing A Nervous Breakdown, takes its title from Carson McCullers' 1940 novel.
The Anniversary performs at the Bottleneck in Lawrence on Saturday, September 17. Heidi Lynne Gluck, Psychic Heat and Lily Prior open the show.
Bill Brownlee’s writing appears weekly in The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine. He blogs about Kansas City’s jazz scene at Plastic Sax.
